Two channels fuzzy c-means detection of multiple sclerosis lesions in multispectral MR images

A novel approach to the detection of multiple sclerosis (MS) lesions in T2and PD-weighted MR images is presented. The core of the proposed method is the use of the two channels fuzzy c-means (FCM) segmentation of data, where the classical FCM approach runs, at first, on the two separate spectra. Then, the one-dimensional distributions of the cluster centers obtained by FCM, are composed in the two-dimensional one, which is a-priori imposed to the two-spectra segmentation procedure. Images are preprocessed to expand their grey level dynamics, and to allow clustering of noise and soft brain tissues. The description of the whole system is reported, along with several comparative experiments where a. pool of physicians judged the outcomes of the presented approach with the T2-only, the PD-only, and the standard two spectra FCM segmentation.